Rural Damascus-SANA
The production of beehives registered in the Damascus countryside has quadrupled this year from last year, to gradually recover after the decline in their numbers during the years of war.
This year, there were 39,457 beehives for about 1,955 breeders in the governorate, according to the Director of Agriculture in Damascus Countryside, Engineer Irfan Ziada, who stated in a statement to SANA reporter that the production of these hives exceeded 167 thousand kilograms and 19 thousand parcels.
In comparison with 2020, the number of bee hives registered in the governorate amounted to about 10,000 hives belonging to about 607 breeders, while production was estimated at 40,300 kg at the governorate level, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform.
An increase made clear that production quantities increased this year as a result of the return of new varieties of honey that exceeded ten, such as citrus, nigella, sesame, cotton, eucalyptus and others.
After four years of continuous work, the breeder Khaled Al-Faqaa was able to restore his hives until their number reached 150 out of 400 hives that migrated due to sabotage and attacks by terrorist organizations in his town Beit Sawa, explaining that the difficulty of movement during the war on Syria to secure sufficient pasture for bees led to a decrease in the number of bees The cells were reduced to more than half, in addition to the lack of sufficient fuel material to be able to travel by cells to secure a diversified food for them, which also caused a decrease in production and an increase in honey prices.
As for the new beekeepers, Al-Faqaa mentioned that the success of beekeeping requires providing the appropriate climate, good pasture and water, in addition to constantly following up the cells and monitoring their development and treatment to achieve greater productivity, indicating that dealing with bees requires experience and calm to avoid harm, in addition to the cleanliness of the place.
Al-Faqaa pointed out that the good and diversified production of honey needs to move beehives between pastures where there are citrus fruits, nigella, coriander, anise, thistles, eucalyptus, cotton blossom and sunflower, explaining that royal jelly is produced in April during the reproduction of monarchs.
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